You’ll probably be pleased to hear that we didn’t build The Local Italy in a day. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been busy packing the site full of news and views from one of Europe’s most captivating countries, and now we're ready to reveal what we've been up to.

Italy may be mired in economic crisis, but there are also an awful lot of interesting, constructive things going on. Our aim is not to sugarcoat the gloom – you’d need a pretty big coat to hide it – but to show all sides of a country that still holds a tremendous allure for people all over the world.

Also, each week we’ll be profiling someone who, for better or worse, is in the news. We’ve already lined up a motley collection of personalities that features everyone from the first Italian to walk in space to the most famous adult-film actress in politics.

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An ice climber of foreign nationality has died of his injuries after he fell between 30 and 40 metres while trying to scale a waterfall in southern Norway. Rescue workers desperately tried to reach the man, who got stuck on a ledge, but were unable to get to him in time.
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Imagine you’re lounging in a Dubai sky bar and you get served a vodka martini filtered through thousand-year-old ice mined from a glacier in the far north of Norway. This is the idea behind Norwegian start-up Svaice.
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The 19-year-old Oslo woman hunted by international police on suspicion of planning a suicide attack has vigorously denied any such plans, telling Norway’s TV2 that she had been planning to come back to Norway.
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An exhibition showing an image of a painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch with a penis cut and pasted onto it has been condemned by one of the artist's descendants as “unworthy” and “undignified”.
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